This invention relates to control systems for vendors and more particularly to a controller for a vendor having a plurality of items to be vended.
A control system for vendors, described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,231,105, is available which allows the prices of items to be easily set and checked and which keeps track of the total accumulated sales of a vendor. Moreover, such a system can be used in beverage vendors (for example) to easily check and set throws of ingredients and water amounts. In the system of the aforesaid patent, parameters such as price are checked by putting the system in a price checking mode and pressing the selection switch of the item whose price is to be checked. This works very well in vendors with a large number of selections but it does require that the person checking the prices, or other parameter, have easy access to the selection switches and that he be careful to press the appropriate selection switch for the item he wants to check. With such a control system any authorized person (i.e., anyone with a key to the vending machine) such as a route man could retrieve any of the data, such as total accumulated sales, even though for security reasons it may be desired that only selected persons, such as a supervisor or the owner of the vendor, have access to such data.